A new twist in the continuing Palin family saga. Today RadarOnline.com reports that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston’s engagement is in trouble because Bristol Palin is “heartbroken” with the news that Johnston may have gotten his former flame, Lanesia Garcia, pregnant. This comes after the National Enquirer initially reported that Garcia might be pregnant with Levi’s child.
But in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast 19-year-old Lanesia Garcia says Levi Johnston is not the father of her unborn baby.
“I just want things to be dropped and get the truth out there. He’s not the father and that’s what needs to be said because there is no way he is,” Garcia said in an interview from the coffee shop where she works in Wasilla.
Garcia, who says she is due August 30, admits to dating Johnston in the eighth grade, but says she has not dated or been with him recently. She insists they have had no contact at all.
“All that needs to be said is it is a rumor and it’s not true.”
She also says the baby’s father, whom she did not want to name, is her boyfriend of three years whom she hopes to marry “if everything works out.”
She lays blame to the roots of the rumor at Wasilla jealousy and believes someone in the small town is getting paid-off.
“I have no idea (who it could be) because somebody did that to get big money. That’s how people are here, they will do whatever they can do to get money,” Garcia says. “That’s how this town is.”
RadarOnline.com also reported that, “Levi is one of three possible fathers who were with Lanesia during the probable week of conception.”
However, Lanesia denies this as well.
“All that needs to be said is it is a rumor and it’s not true.”
Although she hasn’t had contact with Bristol or Levi in “over five or six years,” she has heard through friends that Levi is very upset with the false gossip.
“He just told a few of our friends that it’s not true and it’s messed up whoever started it and that’s pretty much I how I feel, too,” Garcia said. “And it started a bunch of rumors that don’t need to be started.”
The pregnant teen is stunned and clearly upset at what she claims are untrue rumors, and stresses that she does not like being the center of this kind of attention. “I don’t want to be in the middle,” she says. “That’s not the lifestyle for my life to be publicized around media gossip.”
Neither Johnston’s attorney, Rex Butler, or the Palin camp responded to requests for comment.
Shushannah Walshe is the co-author of Sarah From Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar. She was a reporter and producer at the Fox News Channel from August 2001 until the end of the 2008 presidential campaign.